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CSJ Sagarin NCAA FCS Playoff Projection-Oct. 31

Here is this week’s projected field using the Sagarin rankings to fit the bracket. This field is as of today and using the fact that 10 FCS conferences get automatic bids to the field the bracket (highest ranked school in each get the bid in this projection). Then the 14 next highest ranked teams are the at-large teams.

As the season goes on, I will use the six Division I win criteria into account. If there is a team before then cannot possibly get to this total, I will take them out of the projection. I will do a projection each week up until the actual playoff field is announced on Nov. 19th.

This week there were no adjustments but should there be two conference teams paired together, I will take the the playoff committee suggestion where two teams from the same conference cannot meet in the opening round. But one item that I am doing that takes back to the roots of the Division I FCS playoff field is to seed the full group from #1 to #24 and not look at geography to select the field.

I will repeat that this is as the field sits if the rankings were used to select the field today. As this projection shows, there are eight schools from the Missouri Valley Football Conference with seven of these schools in the Top 8. This will likely go down as teams from that league knock each other off and when the six Division I criteria is taken into account.

This is based completely on the Sagarin rankings–no human change. We need to have all ten conferences though so the last four spots will not match the rankings as it is the top conference team that makes it and not just the Top 24 teams. The four conferences of the Big South, NEC, Patriot, and Pioneer all get their champions in so that is why the rankings don’t 100% match the rankings.